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Existing Solar Tech Could Power Entire US, Says NREL
derekmead writes "A new report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory finds that solar holds more potential to generate more power (PDF) than any other clean energy source. The NREL broke things down into four groups: urban and rural utility-scale photovoltaics (giant solar plants, basically) as well as rooftop solar and concentrated mirror arrays. Between those technologies, which are all already on the market, the NREL reckons there's a proven potential for solar to hit a capacity of 200,000 gigawatts in the United States alone. For some perspective, 1 gigawatt is what a single nuclear power plant might generate, and it's more than most coal plants. A gigawatt of capacity is enough to power approximately 700,000 homes."
In a capitalist society, abundance is not a feature.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Don't bother us with your pathetic alternative energies. We have to burn every fucking ounce of long-chain hydrocarbons, use up every ounce of radioactive ore, burn every ounce of methane and other simple hydrocarbon, before we even consider your pathetic green hippy alternative energy sources. Only fags and Commies believe in generating electricity by anything other than CO2-vomiting power plants. Oh, and CO2 is totally harmless, no matter how fucking much of it you puke out.
God bless oil! The only way oil could be better is if I could fuck or eat it! Now get off my lawn, you pathetic Marxist hippies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
1 gigawatt is what a single nuclear power plant might generate, and it's more than most coal plants
On the other hand, that's barely enough for one jump back to the future.
They have tested and proven that "molten salt" can be produced by aiming a field of mirrors at a high tower. The salt is double the temperature of boiling water. It gets stored underground in big tanks or caverns. Then a portion of the heat is used (24 hours a day) to boil water and run a conventional steam turbine hooked up to a conventional generator. The system can run for 3 days with no sunlight.
Solar power towers can store energy efficiently in molten salt and achieve continuous output.
Seriously, building such things is not a "cost" but an investment. Just allocate the whole cost of the past several Middle-Eastern wars to your power bill and see how it goes for ya.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
No, it doesn't. So long as the solar panels pay for themselves, they're viable. It may not be viable for an individual to put them on his roof (mostly because they are undervalued in the market, if what you say is true) but that has nothing to do with whether you can go and build solar power plants to replace coal, nuclear, gas and oil.
Just because one specific type of solar installation might not be perfect (for you) doesn't mean solar itself won't work.
Wouldn't it be great if the U.S. started a public works program (not unlike the Hoover Dam project) that provided unemployed Americans jobs building solar/battery systems? Wouldn't that be a fantastic use of taxpayer's dollars? Why isn't that already happening to help out of work Americans?
No, it isn't. A typical rare earth mine produces enough thorium to power to planet over a given year, and there are thousands of such mines, many of which are currently uneconomical because of thorium contamination (thorium isn't useful for much other than nuclear fuel, and is expensive to store/dispose of without reactors to burn it).
The fact is that there is so much thorium in Earth's crust, you hardly need another energy source. If we ran out after 100,000 years, we would start mining other planets and moons for the stuff. It is so energy dense that such operations would be economical, even with our current primitive technology.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4